Robots in Disguise / Daggers - Manchester Roadhouse - 28.1.08

Nu-Manchester has been bubbling under for a good 12 months with bands like The Tigerpicks, The Whip and The Ting Tings breaking through to varying degrees, but despite us seeing Daggers a good half dozen times previously its not until tonight that they reveal themselves as potentially the greatest pop band of the past 20 years. Owing at least 50% of their backcatalogue to Human League they have in their frontman Theo a superstar who plays up to the teenage audience tonight by teasing them with glimpses of his torso on regular occasions. "Money", "Magazine" and "After Midnight" are gonna be the soundtrack to your life pretty soon, its pretty useless resisting, so get the make up, keys and lipstick now!!!

Robots In Disguise try valiantly to pull off their position tonight as headliners but there's a feeling that after Daggers they're onto a loser. That's not to say they're a great electro-pop band, its just the feeling of stagnancy and relying too much on the Mighty Boosh connection throughout. You get the feeling that half the crowd are hear tonight purely on the chance of Noel Fielding turning up and that takes away that "Get Rid" is a classic with songs such as "She's A Colour Scientist", "Djs Got a Gun a the cover of the Kinks "You Really Got Me" played tonight, even if they do f**k up and leave their best song "Mirror Mirror" out.

Dee Plume and Sue Denim are probably the most competitive frontwomen in music right now and it makes for a great show with each of them pulling shapes to outdo the last move by the other, but all this can't disguise the weak new album "We're In The Music Biz". "The Sex Has Made Me Stupid" is probably the anomaly on the record with "I Live In Berlin" and the title track not even deserving of B-sides let alone a live set.

In the past Robots Of Disguise have had little or no competition in terms of electro pop in the UK, but as tonight proved maybe the pop scene is moving on from these 2 with the likes of Daggers shining a lot brighter.

Alex McCann

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